Episode Report Card Keckler: C- | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Nobs And Nonsense
By Keckler | Season 1 | Episode 9 | Aired on 11.13.2001
Faith. Hearts. Pierced eardrum is my anti-drug. Need to mop up blood.
Enterprise spies on the planet. Reed reports no sign of satellites or other spaceships. Quantum asks whether they should try hailing them. "Who?" Hoshi asks. "I'm picking up dozens of cities on each continent." Quantum mulls this and suggests holding off on dialing down the center, since they have no idea how their communication systems operate. T'Pol opines that the civilization might be far more primitive than Enterprise's realm, and says, "I'm not detecting any EM transmissions." "Pre-Industrial?" Trip supplies for the rest of us. Quantum tells Hoshi to take their Rear Window antics in closer, and she zeroes in on a ship in the water. "It looks like an old clipper ship!" Trip chortles. Quantum says, "Yeah, it's almost like traveling back in time." "I cannot wait to get down there," Trip drawls. Quantum turns to grin at him. Hold your horses, there, Tom McPeeping; shouldn't some protocol be discussed before you go rampaging into their society, arse over earlobes? T'Pol has the same thought, and tells them she'd "advise against" letting their thick and red necks run off with their brains. "It's standard protocol to wait until a society develops warp drive before initiating first contact," she says. "Those are Vulcan protocols, not human," Trip tells her. Somehow I think the Prime Directive will be invented specifically because of all the mondo screw-ups under Capt. Quantum's command. T'Pol suggests that Starfleet should think about adopting the Vulcan way as their own. "There's no way to know how our arrival would affect the evolution of their society," T'Pol finishes. Talk about fanning the flames of controversy -- half the time I think Trip and Quantum do and say the polar opposite of T'Pol simply because they never want to agree with her bad Vulcan self. On second thought, none of this "half the time" crap -- it's more like every day and thrice on Wednesday. Trip asks what she suggests they do with their discovery of this civilization, and T'Pol's answer is pretty predictable: she tells him their scanners could pick up lots of important information from a safe and respectful distance. (I added the "safe and respectful" part.) Quantum rolls his eyes at T'Pol's advice and asks Hoshi whether they can violate this poor race even more by getting a look at how clean their pores are. Hoshi zooms in on a male and female talking on the street. She freeze-frames the woman's face just as she happens to tip her head up a bit. "They don't look so different," Quantum says, adding, "What do you think, Trip?" "I think you're right, Captain," Trip says. Anyone else get this elite-y one-dessert-two-spoons thing Trip and Quant seem to have with each other? They're like a clique. A clique of two ignorant, fratheads who won't listen to anyone but themselves. T'Pol tells Quantum, "You'd be recognized immediately as outsiders." "Not if we look like them," Quantum says, brushing that and all her other future valid concerns aside by saying, "Starfleet could have sent a probe out here to make maps and take pictures, but they didn't. They sent us, so that we could explore with our own senses." That seems to end any and all arguments in his mind.